


Advent XXVII

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [29]
Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Advent, Christmas, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Infant Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 16:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2819018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING!<br/>WARNING!<br/>WARNING!</p><p>This story has one detail--one hard, ugly detail--that may just set your skin crawling and your triggers flashing. It's very brief, it's very concise, but it's one observed reality that's just a punch in the gut. The cold light of reality on something far too often wrapped up and sanitized and veiled away from the public behind platitudes and pastel scrims. It is horrible, and ick.</p><p>It's also less than a full sentence. It's one horrible detail and it's gone. But if you can't deal with crib deaths in the first place, or dead babies, it is...not nice. Nor intended to be. Some things are almost impossible to grasp if you don't actually look at them, and Mummy's inability to ever get completely over her losses makes less sense without it.</p><p>That said, it's a warm section, and is ultimately as sweet as it is bitter, and as profoundly loving as it is sad. And there will be more happy-happy joy-joy tomorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent XXVII

“So nice of Mikey to ask us to say grace and open the feast,” Mummy said, later that night, as she brushed out her hair and cozied into her own nightgown—not those odd, fusty pajamas Mike had provided, but her much preferred silk negligee and matching wrap. She was warm and pink and fresh from the shower, and smelled of her favorite scent—Shalimar.

She looked in the mirror, weighed the pros and cons, and concluded happily that she wasn’t too shabby given her age. She grinned to herself…Dear Sig was none too shabby himself.

He was bumbling around in a sweet buzz of happy humming— _God Bless the master of the house, the mistress also, and all the little children who round the table go…._

He shook out the flannel PJs, looking at them in bemusement. They were warm, and quite proper, and they were printed with holly of all things… This for a man whose usual bed attire was that of his youth in the sixties—a t-shirt, and seldom more.

“Don’t bother with ‘em,” she said.

“No?” he asked, vaguely—then snapped into amused alertness. “Ah. I see. And is this a Christmas present, too?”

“Depends,” she said. “Do you count it as a gift the rest of the year?”

“My dear Em—I’m rapidly approaching eighty. I count every encounter as both a gift and a minor miracle.”

She laughed. “Then you, my dear, are obviously a holy, holy man.”

“And you remain, as ever, the hottest woman I know.”

“And a flake.”

“That goes without saying.”

They were, she thought, comfortable together, in the happiest of senses. She thought of Mike, all wrapped up in Sherlock’s DI. A sweet man, and smarter than he chose to let on, but he brought a healthy, earthy comfort to her difficult older son’s life she could only approve of. And that Irish girl—the first she’d ever seen Sherlock willing to even react to as a woman, at least in public. At least—with his family. For all she knew Billy had been sowing entire fields of wild oats this past going-on-forty years…but with her and Sig and, so far as she could tell, with Mikey, he’d acted like a cloistered monk.

A rather priggish, disapproving monk at that.

It would serve him right if she sniffed and snipped at him, she thought with a mischievous grin. She’d caught him and the girl well short of _in flagrante_ in one of the library alcoves that evening, but still quite compromised by ancient standards. She should have scolded.

No. She had settled for laughing and tipping the girl a wink—only to have it tipped right back at her. Saucy thing. Just what a yearning grandmother liked to see, though—enthusiasm for the task at hand, as it were. Maybe she’d dandle one of her own someday.

That Watson woman…Mary, that was her name…had let her settle the baby before bed. She closed her eyes, remembering, her hands curved in her lap, fingers tingling at the remembered touch of a strong, warm little body in a bright red Christmas romper and a stretchy little red headband with a bow on top. She’d sung to the baby… She’d sung “Scarlet Ribbons.”

_All the stores were closed and shuttered,_

_All the streets were dark and bare,_

_In that town no scarlet ribbons,_

_scarlet ribbons for her hair._

So mawkish of her, she thought, feeling the tears prickle again. She closed her eyes tighter, trying to force them away. It was a good thing to hold a baby. Sweet, precious babies, at that perfect “Away in a Manger” age, when their mothers could still pretend it would all be sweetness and milky adoration and the wonder of first creeping, first words, first teeth, first steps…first Christmas.

She wondered if the presents she’d purchased for her daughter were still somewhere in the manor house, wrapped in faded, crackling paper four decades old. She knew she’d refused to pack them when they all moved to the Dower House. Had someone crated them up and stored them in the attics? She could remember them, she thought. There had been a dainty sundress, bought in a large size, too wonderful to pass up though it would be a year after purchase before she could be expected to wear the outfit. She could call to mind the bright seventies flowers in the color of fruit jellies—saturated yellows and reds and oranges. There had been a stuffed tiger, fat and smiling. There had been a hammer-toy, with pegs to be hammered down with strong blows. Her daughter had seemed so strong…it had never occurred to Em that someday she’d go down to the nursery to dress her for the day and pick her up unthinking—to drop her, screaming, as she realized the little body was not only cold, but already rigid with rigor mortis.

 _“Em,”_ Sig said, from across the room.

“I’m fine,” she replied, knowing full well he knew she wasn’t.

He had been as traumatized, she thought. His daughter—his beautiful daughter dead. And his wife helpless and hopeless and shattered. Still, she remembered him coming to her in the morning, with little Mike at his side, and the two of them setting up her breakfast tray, and Mike solemnly pouring the tea, saying “I’ll play mother, shall I?”

Sig had brushed her hair for her that day—long  seventies hair, blonde and straight. He’d braided it with clever fingers that knew how to make hunter’s braids for the horses and how to knot a lanyard and how to splice lines for a boat’s rigging. Mike had handed up the red ribbons to tie the ends.

Her two dear men, she’d called them, and when she’d suggested the move to the Dower House and Sig had agreed, she’d forced herself to rise and pack and sort and choose, with little Mike beside her, taping each box and writing in his round, unformed hand what was inside.  She recalled on that said only, MY BOOKS. Her boy, already at that age reading every children’s classic she knew of and quite a few she’d never encountered.

“I remember,” she said, softly. “You braided my hair for me, and Mike held the ribbons.”

“He was a good boy,” he said.

“Yes. He was.” She forced herself to look into the mirror, finding him in its depths watching her, worried for her. “He was good to let you say grace and let us open the feast. ‘God bless the master of the house, the mistress also.’ I even felt like the lady of the manor, tonight. I’m not sure I ever did before, even when we used to open the place up for Christmas.”

“Iconoclast, you,” he said, smiling fondly. “No patience with the good old ways and customs.”

“If the good old ways and customs had their way I’d be illiterate, innumerate, and half-blind from needlework,” she said, tartly, and rose, crossing to her dear husband. She tiptoed up high to kiss his chin. “Come here, you—there’s a bed waiting, and I intend to put it to good use.”

He laughed and wrapped her tight, and tumbled them both to the mattress, pulling the duvet over their shoulders. They loved well—as happy lovers with years of experience with each other may do. And, yet…

And, yet, as she dropped off to sleep, she heard her own voice as it had been while she rocked little Em Her voice had thickened and broken…

_I looked in and on her bed,_

_In gay profusion, lying there—_

_Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons,_

_Scarlet ribbons for her hair._

She didn’t believe in miracles anymore. If miracles were true she’d have had a daughter, not ribbons, no matter how kindly little Mike had handed them up for his father to tie into his mother Em’s braids.

 

 **Nota Bene:** Three songs this time.

[Christmas Welcome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KfHfHw4mZY&spfreload=1): Ok, folks, I had to SEARCH for this puppy. I grew up hearing it, and never realized it was such an obscure thing. Like many carols intended for wassailers, it’s got bits and snatches from other wassail songs, but it’s very much its own beast, and I love it. Forgive the lovely girls singing for their revels—they are young, and brave, and they sound forth valiantly.

Only mentioned in passing, but who can resist: [Away in a Manger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftEpuxUo1E)

And, finally, [Scarlet Ribbons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWACrB7x5uA). Forgive me—sometimes I find Willie Nelson’s rough, simple, unornamented versions of songs almost perfect. He doesn’t hand up polish, but straight pathos.


End file.
